Late Tuesday afternoon I took this photo of the kittens and their mom. They were resting out under the big pine behind the woodshed. I told Roger that I was concerned that they were really vulnerable out there. They had definitely outgrown the little space where they had spent the past four weeks. While they did run under there any time they felt threatened, they were happily inclined to explore a little bit of the space around them in their adorable kitty way. We had first seen them on Sunday, and we never saw the kittens again after this pic on Tuesday. We did find the momma cat hiding under our deck in the backyard Wednesday morning. She has spent almost all of her time there since. No kittens. It is coyote season, which reminds us of what happened here last Memorial Day weekend 2012.
We still plan to trap mom and take her to a "no-kill" shelter. This is not the outcome we had expected at all, but it really is typical of the hard life of domestic and feral critters whose lives overlap the wild.
UPDATE:
We set up the motion sensor camera under the deck, just to really make sure momma cat was alone. Roger crawled under there Thursday afternoon and did not see any kittens. But we wanted one last verification. And yes indeed, there are two kittens under there with momma. Not sure where they were hiding or if she just brought them under there, but they are there. Momma just had her first meal in the unset trap. Plan is to set it on Monday. Wish us luck. We'll keep you posted. Then it'll be kitten trappin' time. And we will be so glad when this saga is over.
Afterwards
4 hours ago